Although some homes may be equipped with automatic ice making equipment, ice cubes in most homes are made with individual ice cube trays placed in a freezer or the freezing compartment of a refrigerator. These trays are first filled with water, usually at the kitchen sink, and are then hand-carried to the refrigerator or freezer. The trays containing frozen ice cubes are later removed from the freezer, and the ice cubes are frequently extracted from the trays and placed in a suitable ice bucket or other container to await use.
Making ice cubes with conventional ice trays is, as most persons realize, an awkward and potentially messy experience. Ice cube trays are frequently filled with water nearly to overflowing, with the result that water in the trays is frequently sloshed or spilled during the trip from sink to refrigerator. Even if one succeeds in bringing the freshly-filled tray to the refrigerator without spilling, the person must then juggle the tray in one hand while opening the door to the freezer compartment with the other hand, an operation especially prone to spillage. Some sloshing or spillage frequently occurs as the freshly-filled tray is placed in the freezer compartment, causing the tray itself to become securely frozen to the floor of the freezer compartment or to adjacent ice cube trays.
Conventional ice cube trays, in addition to having the disadvantages noted above, have other known disadvantages. For example, conventional trays cannot easily be stacked one atop the other in the freezer, and so the trays must be placed side by side or on special shelves provided for that purpose in the freezer. Consequently, existing ice cube trays do not efficiently use the available volume of space within the freezer.
Moreover, after ice cubes are formed in conventional trays, it is frequently difficult to extract the ice cubes from the trays without dropping the individual cubes or fragments of ice released from the tray while extracting the ice cubes.